NHL 20 Leaks: Player Banned From Xbox Live

Due to an error, several players were able to download NHL 20 and play it before its release, at the risk of losing their account when sharing information.

Update : Electronic Arts has just reacted by lifting the ban and cracking a statement, all the info here.

Several Xbox gamers were able to download and play NHL 20 over a month before its release. Of course, some of them could not help but share the first images on social networks, overriding the communication of Electronic Arts by showing new features of the game that have not yet been unveiled.

On Reddit, a user who leaked the game claims to have been granted a permanent ban from Microsoft, photo in support. Suffice to say that the disappointment and disarray are great since he lost his entire account, including his backups and all his games.

So hard blow, but whose fault is it? By playing more than a month before the release of a game, you have to suspect that companies will be monitoring social networks. On the other hand, there was indeed an error on the part of Microsoft to have allowed the download before its release, but especially because the downloaded versions do not include a lock preventing playing before its launch. Usually, when we receive games prior to their release on Xbox, after signing an NDA pledging not to disclose the game by a certain date, we also receive an unlock code for the game or an unlocked and playable version. but that sometimes may not show up as a game purchased from Xbox Live. It is indeed part of our library, but is still offered for sale on the Store.

When it’s a highly anticipated Microsoft game like Halo, we even have to provide our gamertag to be whitelisted, which didn’t stop me from getting banned by mistake before Halo was released. 4 by an apparently unruly employee.

In any case, in this case, the players did not sign anything, but had access to a playable version by mistake, and it is a bad decision. Take the example of what happens in games where players access content in advance. It’s common in Destiny to be able to access places before they launch. It was possible to enter The Last Wish raid before it launched, or into locations in Destiny 1 that were part of the DLC. Of course, you have to exploit some bugs in the game or find the right place to go through the backgrounds, but Bungie has never banned players for that. It’s her fault for leaving these weaknesses, so she makes amends, eventually fixes the bug, and doesn’t ban anyone for that sort of reason.

On the other hand, Electronic Arts did ban the popular streamer Gladd from Anthem for exploiting a bug in the Storm allowing him to do his ultimate endlessly (it was enough to press F repeatedly for the ultimate to not stop. ). It is therefore difficult to know from whom the request for ban comes. In any case, it is a bad story and it is not excluded that this kind of error could be repeated. Rather than banning players who are impatient and far too happy to get their hands on their long-awaited game before its release, but who have broken the publisher’s communication without necessarily being aware of it, it would be better to put in place a way to deactivate these games and avoid bad publicity, or even check that they have a lock when they are added to the servers, which is the least of it.